


Fall Down at Your Door

by Winterstar



Series: I would walk 500 miles [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Superhusbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2439686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Steve recovers, Tony and Steve discuss the possibilities for the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall Down at Your Door

“Come on now, Maggie, Papa needs his rest,” Tony says as he walks into the living room to find his toddler bouncing up and down on the couch next to Steve. Steve is clapping in tune to her squeals. “Stop that, you’ll only encourage her.” He bats at Steve on the shoulder, but only lightly since the pain continues to persist even after a week out of the hospital.

Maggie drops down and slides off the couch only to use Steve’s leg to climb back up onto the seat like she’s conquering Mount Everest. Reaching down, Steve grasps her under the arms and hoists her up onto his lap. He groans as he does it, the pain laced into the underlying moan.

Tony rounds the couch, places the tray with tea, soup, and sandwich on the coffee table, and hauls Maggie away. “Stop it, now.” His tone sharp, it cuts the air in slashes, hard and harsh.

“Tony, it’s not-.” He stretches up but Tony already has their daughter in his arms calling for the nanny to come and take her. “Amie is out, she had a dental appointment. I said it was okay.”

“Okay? Okay? You’re just recovering from major death and now you’re letting our nanny go gallivanting around the city?” He knows, his rational mind, knows he’s overreacting, but he can’t stop himself, not after seeing Steve as a husk, a dying thing lying in a bed hooked up to machines. Not recognizable, with injuries upon injuries.

“Tony, it’s fine, she’s not gallivanting, Amie had a dental appointment,” Steve says and he braces his hand on the arm of the couch to use as leverage as he forces his body to respond and he stands.

“Damn it, Steve, sit down,” Tony says and leaves Maggie to her own devices – which is exactly what he should not do since she immediately pops up on the back of the couch and races along its length as if she’s a gymnast doing the balance beam at the Olympics.

Steve jerks around to catch her as she teeters, huffs out a wince as he collapses on the shattered leg that is still healing even at a super soldier serum rapid rate. Steve manages to fall a little less gracefully than normal, but at the same time stretches out his arms to catch Maggie. She giggles in his arms even as Tony notices the slight flicker of discomfiture over Steve’s expression.

“Come on you,” Tony says and grabs her hand to drag her away.

“No, Papa,” she says and tries to wiggle back to Steve.

“This is why Amie should be here,” Tony says. “JARVIS can you get Amie on the line.”

“As you say, sir.”

“Belay that order,” Steve says. “She’s busy I gave her the rest of the day off. Let her be, Tony.” He rubs his thigh, as he arches his back against the pain. “She’s been working full time since the whole attack.”

“Sir?” JARVIS asks for confirmation.

“Fine, fine, don’t call her.” Tony still keeps Maggie away from Steve and then leans down to her. “Can you go and play with your toys?”

“Play dress up?” she says with bright eyes and a dimpled smile.

“Only if I get to be Superman this time, I don’t want to be Wonder Woman. Those panties chaff.” Maggie giggles and races down the hallway, her bare feet slapping the tiles. “JARVIS can you call Hawkeye and see if he can-?”

“I have already informed Mister Barton and he is on his way. And sir, he informed me that whoever is last to the cosplay has to be Wonder Woman.”

Tony releases a sigh; he needs to get on line and find a better outfit. Right now, though, he needs to deal with his wayward husband. He turns back to Steve to see he’s trying vainly to adjust the pillows; his face wet with perspiration.

“Hey, hey, let me,” Tony says and tries to tuck a pillow behind Steve’s back.

“Stop, just stop,” Steve says and his expression crumples and he leans back against the couch. “Don’t Tony, please.”

Tony exhales and settles next to him. “What’s this? What’s up?”

He only shakes his head and mumbles sounds that don’t form words.

“Come on, now,” Tony says. “Tell me.” He pushes back strands of hair and Steve faces him.

“You should be at the meeting in California,” Steve says and rolls his head to look at Tony. His gaze looks weary, as if the many years he has lived have finally caught him in their barbed net.

“Maybe,” Tony says and moves forward to kiss Steve’s temple. “Pepper has it. Don’t worry about it. I need to be here.”

“You need to make sure the board doesn’t do anything radical, Tony. You know how important the intellectual property rights are,” Steve says.

“Shush, who told you about IP?” Tony smiles and it is gentle and yielding because he will do anything for this man.

“Would you believe me if I told you Pepper?” Steve says and he clasps Tony’s hand in his own.

“Not really,” Tony says. “What’s this all about?”

“How are we going to do this? How?” Steve says and his voice cracks as if the pain plaguing his body creeps into every facet of his being. “How are we going to make everything okay, everything normal for her?”

“Nothing’s normal, what’s normal?” Tony says. “Normal is bullies pulling her hair and stealing her cookies at lunch. I don’t envy normal.”

“Should she have to worry about us? About whether or not her Dada or Papa will come home from work? How many kids do you think have that worry on their shoulders,” Steve says.

“She’s more worried about where her Bucky Bear disappeared to, then anything else at this point,” Tony says and runs a hand along the length of Steve’s arm. There are no faded bruises, no marks to show how long he spent hooked up to machines, or signs that blink or alert anyone to indicate Steve died only to have the serum revive him.

“Be serious, Tony, we have to think about these things,” Steve says and the grayness tinting his eyes, his skin drains all the color from the world.

Tony reaches up and over to his husband, cupping the side of Steve’s head where the hair had been shaved away to piece together his skull since it had been blown apart. The prickle of hair and the softening of the scar feel like horror and wonder to his fingertips at the same time. “I am being serious. She doesn’t think about those things.”

“She will.”

“Eventually, what’s this all about?” Tony says, again. He can see the haunted look in Steve as if he’s running from shadows, from monsters in the closet. There are always large nightmares following them. It’s part of their business, their routine lives. 

Steve glances at Tony and then gazes into the middle space. He’s noticed over the last few days how that middle space, the distance between presence and lost has consumed Steve. “I think we should stop. I think we should quit.”

Tony swallows down his fear; he hadn’t realized how the courage and fortitude of Captain America fed him the source of his own bravery, his own resiliency. “If you want?” 

Steve drops his gaze and, for the first time, Tony spots the tears glinting in his eyes as they track down his face without a sound to announce them. “Maybe, yes. No.”

“You don’t have to sacrifice what you love-.”

“That’s the point,” Steve says, snapping, cutting the air with his words. When he speaks again, his words aren’t as gripping yet hold Tony all the same. “That’s the point, I don’t want to sacrifice her.”

“We’re not.”

“Aren’t we?” Steve shakes his head. “She didn’t ask to come into this world. We brought her into the world. That makes it our duty to protect her, to do what’s right by her.”

“Agreed.” Tony caress the side of Steve’s head and he leans into it. Tony hopes it means that the action offers Steve some comfort.

“Then what’s the answer?” Steve says and he looks at Tony. “I think, at the very least, I should give up the shield.”

“You’d do that?”

“Yes, for you, for her. I would do anything, for you.”

Tony considers Steve’s words. “Should we both?” The question is out of his mouth before he realizes the implications. Giving up Iron Man never worked in the past; he’d lost Pepper over that fact.

“I can’t answer that,” Steve says and his eyes are farther away now than they were before. “You left the hospital.”

Tony drops his hand and lets it rest on Steve’s shoulder. The moments before they pulled the plug on Steve, before he walked away with their daughter trouble him. “Yes.” He cannot say anything more because the pain is too near, too fresh.

“I’m glad.” 

Tony raises eyes he did not realize he lowered. 

“I’m glad you didn’t wait and watch the machines click down the final moments.” 

“But I wasn’t there when you opened your eyes for the first time, either,” Tony says. Stating each word feels like daggers in his heart, he cannot imagine how that moment felt to Steve.

“No, you weren’t.” Steve shakes his head and then scoots closer to Tony. He lays his head onto Tony’s shoulder. There’s a weight, a substance, and a holy connection that Tony cannot begin to explain. He cups his hand over Steve. “I am so afraid of losing you, I never thought-.”

“Baby,” Tony whispers.

“I assumed it would be me alone with you gone, I never thought how it would feel for you,” Steve says and his words sound more like a confession than an observation. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think how you might want a tether, a link to me. I’m selfish and-.”

Tony closes his mouth over Steve’s, soft but pressing inward until he relaxes under Tony’s touch and opens. Tony tantalizes with a tender swipe of a tongue and then Steve deepens the kiss, welcoming Tony and gliding his arms and hands around him.

When they break, Tony sees the quiet tears. “Don’t do this to yourself. You have a long way to go to get better.” Steve needs to focus on the long road ahead. He might be able to get physical better faster than most, but the fact remains he died and the emotional and psychological impact of that lingers, festers like a cancer. It’s obvious the way Steve’s mind is jumping from one thing to the next, trying to fix and repair, and find solutions to how to make them safe.

“I want you to be happy, Tony. What would make you happy?”

“You, well again?” 

“And?”

“Safety. I want my family to be safe.”

“Yeah,” Steve says and they interlock hands as they lay entwined on the couch. “How do we do that?”

“I don’t think it’s a superhero question. I think every family has this hanging over their heads.”

“How do we get past it?” Steve says and yawns. He’s tired and hasn’t eaten yet. Tony has to make sure Steve eats to feed that appetite and to help the massive healing required due to all the injuries Steve sustained.

“Step by step, like everyone else,” Tony says. “We’ll figure it out.”

Steve only makes a throaty sound and they fall silent for a piece of time. Finally, he murmurs, “Let’s try again.”

“Try again?”

“I might give up the shield, I might not. You might give up Iron Man, you might not, but what I know is that I want Maggie to have more than just us.”

“It’s a dangerous world, bringing in another child might complicate things even more.”

“Or not,” Steve says.

“Having kids isn’t an answer Steve,” Tony says.

“No, but having another child shows we have hope for the future.”

He lifts up Steve’s hand and kisses the knuckles. “Let’s think about it all. Okay? Right now, you eat, you sleep, you get better.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Steve says.

“That’s all we can do, right?”

“Right,” Steve says and drifts off to sleep on Tony’s chest, listening to his heart. Tony doesn’t disturb him, only cuddles around him, holding him, knowing he’s real, and touching that silent space of peace between them.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [tumblr](http://winterstar95.tumblr.com)
> 
> I'm leaving it up to you, dear readers, if you want more of this series. Thanks so much!


End file.
